The gondola rolled gently to one side in a lethargic motion and I swayed uncertainly along with it. No, I wasn't gliding along a Venetian canal, instead I was floating lazily up into a cloudless sky above an Essex airfield. My craft was a bloated blimp captained by the charmingly excitable and exceedingly posh Katharine 'chocks away!' Bord - the world's only female airship pilot.

After returning a few months ago from our global circumnavigation without flying, it was a strange experience for me to be airborne again, in what felt like a posh minibus (it had leather seats) slung beneath the belly of a vast aerial whale. It had been more than two years since I had been on a plane for work - for a five-week climate change assignment in China - and almost six years since my last holiday flight. But the sedate, serene and indeed graceful way in which our balloon rose into the air was a far cry from the rumble, roar and G-force-inducing thrust of your average climate-stewing jet.

'I hog the airship,' trilled Katharine, explaining with genuine passion her affection for the vessel and her reluctance to cede control to her co-pilot. Was it a lucrative occupation, I enquired, as she waxed lyrical about the joy of being paid to 'float around the world', her energetic and enthusiastic delivery in stark contrast to the apparently lackadaisical movement of the balloony beast we were travelling in. 'Well, it keeps me in boots and handbags,' she said.

Similar tourist airships are being launched in several cities around the world, and as London lolled beneath us in the hot July sunshine I pondered the potential of airships to play a genuine transport role in a carbon-constrained future, perhaps offering an alternative to fuel-hungry aviation. Tomorrow's passengers would surely relish the sightseeing potential of airship travel - and it would be a damn sight faster than any cargo ship.

Sadly, my research tells me, in the short term this is not to be. While breathtakingly spectacular, this glorified sightseeing trip over the capital was, frankly, pretty pricey. Like it or not, airships are also still at the mercy of the elements, making their use on regular point-to-point journeys too unreliable to make business sense. It would be a perverse irony indeed if the return of this low-carbon form of flying were to be ultimately scuppered by the very increase in climate turbulence it might do so much to alleviate.